Integration as Service: Implications of Faith-Praxis Integration for Training

Faith-praxis integration should be given further attention as the integration of applied psychology and Christian theology proceeds. The authors outline a rationale for faith-praxis integration based upon patterns of mental health needs and resources in the U.S. and for a Kingdom mandate. Implications of a faith-praxis perspective for trainers of Christian psychologists are suggested in relation to a program’s missions statement, faculty, course work, practical training, research, and relationship to the community. Selected activities of existing Christian psychology training programs are included to illustrate these implications. Ongoing discussion is invited concerning this emerging area of integration

Women Exiting Prostitution: Reports of Coercive Control in Intimate Relationships

There is burgeoning research on intimate partner violence (IPV) experiences among women globally. However, there is a dearth of research on IPV experiences among marginalized populations in Western countries. Over the past decade, IPV research has shifted from a focus only on physical and sexual violence to include coercive control experiences. These include a continuum of nonviolent behaviors centered on maintaining dominance over one’s partner. However, the empirical literature on examining coercive control among women in prostitution within non-commercial intimate partners is lacking. In this study, we analyzed interviews with 17 women exiting prostitution and examined reported IPV sexual, physical, and coercive control experiences perpetrated by intimate partners. Our findings revealed that participants experienced extensive physical and sexual IPV as well as physical and non-physical coercive control within non-commercial partner relationships. Coercive control was the most frequent type of abuse reported. All nine investigated coercive control tactics were represented within participants’ descriptions. Of these, exploitation (36%), intimidation (16.3%), degradation (12.5%), and deception (10.0%) were the most commonly identified. Understanding and assessing violent actions and control dynamics within non-commercial intimate partner relationships among women exiting prostitution have important implications for various stakeholders within the criminal justice system

Training Psychologists to Work With Religious Organizations: The Center for Church-Psychology Collaboration

Church-psychology collaboration is gaining attention among professional psychologists, but few training or practical research opportunities are available for those interested in collaborating with religious leaders and organizations. The authors introduce the Center for Church-Psychology Collaboration (CCPC), with its mission to make sustained and relevant contributions to the research literature in psychology, train doctoral students in effective means of collaborating with religious organizations, and provide service to religious communities throughout the world. Domestic and global implications are discussed

Empowered Parent Education: An empirical investigation of empowerment concepts

Low-income, urban, minority families are faced with grave difficulties as they cope with concerns such as inadequate education, economic hard times, violent crime, and drug abuse. Parent education interventions have been employed by professionals in partial response to these formidable difficulties. A number of strategies have documented positive effects on particular child or parent variables. However, significant problems attracting and retaining participants, achieving comprehensive treatment gains, and maintaining desired outcomes have been widely reported. These failures suggest a serious mismatch between the design and delivery of interventions and the strengths and needs of targeted parents. The argument is made here that parents can be empowered to actively collaborate in shaping their own parent education opportunities. The purpose of this study was twofold. First, concepts from the empowerment literature (partnership, critique, co-construction and mastery) were used to design the Empowered Parent Education strategy (EPE). Second, a parent rating scale was developed to capture salient features of empowered parent and presenter behavior during the intervention. One-hundred-twenty-six Head Start parents participated in the development of the Empowered Parent Education Scale (EPES) and a comparison of EPE with a conventional parent education condition (CPE). Item analyses and scaling of the EPES yielded a reliable measure with two underlying dimensions: Parent Involvement and Presenter Respect. Comparison of the strategies indicated that participants in the empowered condition were perceived by peers as more actively involved than participants in the conventional counterpart. In addition, EPE content was judged as more relevant and presenter behavior as more respectful than in the conventional condition. Finally, parents overwhelmingly preferred the empowered strategy to the conventional one. Implications for the development of parent education strategies and recommendations for future research are discussed